Pollinating insects are key to the evolutionary and ecological success of flowering plants and enable much of the diversity in the human diet. Bees are arguably one of the most important beneficial insects worldwide. Their positive impact can be measured by the value they contribute to the agricultural economy, their ecological role in providing pollination services, and the hive products they produce. The honey bee is credited with approximately 85% of the pollinating activity necessary to supply about one-quarter to one-third of the nation's food supply. Over 50 major crops in the United States either depend on honey bees for pollination or produce more abundantly when honey bees are plentiful.
Approximately 90% of flowering plants—corresponding to nearly three quarters of global agricultural crops—use pollinators to set seed and fruit. Populations of several species of pollinators, however, are in decline throughout the world, threatening the stability of our ecosystems and productivity of our agricultural landscapes.
Bees are vital to global biodiversity and food security through their pollination of plants, including several key crops. Honey bees, however, are exposed to myriad of stressors including pests, pathogens, pesticides, poor nutrition due to monocropping and habitat loss leading to extreme colony losses.
In about 2006-2007, the discovery of the devastating effects of Colony Collapse Disorder on US honey bee populations was first noticed. Overwhelming evidence now suggests that numerous wild and managed bee populations are in decline. This has led to concerns over human food security and maintenance of biodiversity. Recent losses of honeybee colonies have been linked to several non-exclusive factors; such as pests, parasites, pesticides (e.g., neonicotinoids) and other toxins. In the last 20 years, the bee-keeping sector registered very consistent losses worldwide, in terms of bee numbers and productivity. Queen health is crucial to colony survival of social bees. Recently, queen failure has been proposed to be a major driver of managed honey bee colony losses. The role of queens (primary reproductive females that can produce diploid offspring) in social bee colony survival is indispensable. There have been anecdotal reports of ‘poor quality queens’ (i.e. queen failure) of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera; hereafter honey bee), throughout the northern hemisphere.
Common microbial pathogens appear to be major threats to honey bees, while sublethal doses of pesticide may enhance their deleterious effects on honey bee larvae and adults. Honey bees are suffering from elevated colony losses in the northern hemisphere possibly because of a variety of emergent microbial pathogens, with which pesticides may interact to exacerbate their impacts.
More than six decades after the onset of wide-scale commercial use of synthetic pesticides and more than fifty years after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, pesticides, particularly insecticides, arguably remain the most influential pest management tool around the globe. Nevertheless, pesticide use is still a controversial issue and is at the regulatory forefront in most countries. Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants. The European Union has therefore introduced a moratorium on three neonicotinoids as seed coatings in flowering crops that attract bees. The neonicotinoid class of chemical pesticides has recently received considerable attention because of potential risks it poses to ecosystem functioning and services. Ubiquitously used for management of harmful insects in the last decade, these systemic chemicals persist in the environment, thereby promoting their contact with non-target organisms such as pollinating bees.
Sub-lethal doses of neonicotinoids have been shown to negatively impact the health of honeybees. Understanding the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees is vital because of reported declines in bee diversity and distribution and the crucial role bees have as pollinators in ecosystems and agriculture. Pollinators perform sophisticated behaviors' while foraging that require them to learn and remember floral traits associated with food. Neonicotinoid pesticides, at levels shown to occur in the wild, interfere with the learning circuits in the bee's brain. Pesticides have a direct impact on pollinator brain physiology. Disruption in this important function has profound implications for honeybee colony survival, because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food. Both honey bees and bumble bees prefer sugar solutions laced with the neonicotinoids imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam over pure sugar water, presumably due to the nicotine-like addition that is so common in humans.
On Apr. 2, 2015, the EPA announced that it will not be approving new outdoor uses of neonicotinoids until pollinator risk assessments are complete. Tests include acute and chronic toxicity tests for adults and larvae, field feeding studies, foliage toxicity, residues in pollen and nectar, and realistic field experiments that look at long term effects.
Canola is becoming a favored crop in the prairies, with over a million acres (1700 square miles) to be planted in North Dakota alone this year. Bayer CropScience grows hybrid canola seed in Canada, and in an ironic twist, is thereby the largest renter of honey bee pollination services in Canada, and is thus highly motivated to ensure that the product does not harm bees. Virtually all canola seed is treated with clothianidin or its precursor, thiamethoxam.
There is therefore a long felt but unsolved need for a system and method to protect honey bees from the increasing use of neonicotinoid insecticides which are believed to be at least partially responsible for the recent demise of honey bee populations.
The corpses of hibernating bats were first found blanketing caves in the northeastern United States in 2006. The disease that killed them, caused by a cold-loving fungus called Geomyces destructans—and dubbed White-nose Syndrome (WNS) for the tell-tale white fuzz it leaves on bats' ears and noses—has since destroyed at least one million Bats, becoming one of the most precipitous wildlife decline in the past century in North America. WNS is a fungal disease that has its greatest impacts during bat hibernation and emergence. Bats in torpor experience reduced immune function, thus potentially compromising their ability to combat WNS. Fat reserves are metabolized during hibernation, a process that can mobilize contaminants to the brain and other tissues coincident with reduced immune function. CECs, such as PBDEs, bisphenol A, and triclosan, may further diminish immune competence.
Bats are especially vulnerable to chemical pollution. They're small—the little brown bat weighs just 8 grams—and can live for up to three decades. For their body size, bats live longer than any other order of mammal. Bats may be more susceptible than other mammals to the effects of low doses of bioaccumulative contaminants due to their annual life cycles, requiring significant fat deposition followed by extreme fat depletion during hibernation or migration, at which time contaminants may be mobilized into the brain and other tissues.
There is a growing body of science directly implicating neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides in the significant decline of bees and other pollinators, including bats. Pollinator decline has been found on every continent in the world, and hundreds of pollinator species are on the verge of extinction. Since 2006, bees in the U.S. have been dying off or seemingly abandoning their hives—a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. While there are many contributors to pollinator decline, two of the most important are the loss of habitat and the introduction and expansion of use of new pesticides on agricultural cropland. A specific concern centers on neonicotinoids, a relatively new class of systemic insecticides, often applied as a seed coating in commodity agriculture.
Neonicotinoids came into wide use in the early 2000s. Unlike older pesticides that evaporate or disperse shortly after application, neonicotinoids are systemic poisons. Applied to the soil or doused on seeds, neonicotinoid insecticides incorporate themselves into plant tissues, turning the plant itself into a tiny poison factory emitting toxin from its roots, leaves, stems, pollen, and nectar. As the name suggest, neonicotinoids are similar in structure to nicotine and paralyze or disorient insects by blocking a pathway that transmits nerve impulses in the insect's central nervous system.
Neonicotinoids are used to control a wide variety of insects. The first neonicotinoid, imidacloprid (Admire), became available in the United States in 1994 and is currently present in over 400 products on the market. Other neonic insecticides include acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, nitenpyram, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam. In 2006, neonicotinoids accounted for over 17 percent of the global insecticide market. Two of them—clothianidin and thiamethoxam—dominate the global market for insecticidal seed treatments and are used to coat the seeds of most of the annual crops planted around the world. In fact, more than 94 percent of the corn and more than 30 percent of the soy planted in the United States is pretreated with neonicotinoids.
The introduction of neonicotinoids into the agricultural marketplace occurred around the same time as the introduction of GMO crops in the mid-to-late 1990s. Monsanto and Syngenta, the undisputed leaders in patented genetically engineered seeds, also have close relationships with the leading global neonic producer, Bayer. Most new commodity crops are increasingly coming to farmers with stacked traits, which means more than one transgenic alteration. These genetically engineered and transplanted traits are marketed to farmers as providing benefits such as resistance to multiple herbicides, pests, funguses, heat and drought.
Seed treatment applications are prophylactic, meaning they are used whether or not there is any evidence of pest pressures. At least 30 percent of soybean seeds planted annually (approximately 22.5 million out of 75 million acres) are pretreated with neonic insecticides (two of the primary four being imidacloprid and thiamethoxam). But corn has the highest use and acreage with around 94 percent of U.S. corn treated with a neonicotinoid. That widespread use has quickly elevated the Midwest to the highest levels of neonicotinoid use in the country. These neonicotinoids don't stay in the plants and soil however, but find their ways into the water as well. A recent U.S. Geological Survey report confirmed that neonicotinoids were common in streams throughout the Midwest. Bats frequently forage in aquatic and terrestrial habitats that may be subjected to discharges from wastewater treatment plants, agricultural operations, and other point and nonpoint sources of contaminants.
Death is not the only outcome of pesticide exposure. Sub-lethal doses of neonicotinoids can disrupt pollinators' cognitive abilities, communication and physiology. Neonicotinoids also have harmful synergistic impacts on pollinators in combination with other chemicals in the field, compounding their effects. Scientists have shown in multiple studies that the combined presence of neonicotinoids and some fungicides can increase the potency of neonicotinoids by more than 1,000-fold. In addition to their toxicity, neonicotinoids persist in plants much longer than most other insecticides, thereby compounding their impact on pollinators. They can reside in plant tissues for over a year, and some can persist for even longer in the soil. This means pollinators and other animals are exposed to the chemicals for extended periods of time and in some regions year-round.
There is a desperate need for an effective treatment to advert the destruction of bat species that has been observed over the last decade. The ramifications of the elimination of such an important pollinator, such as the bat, will have tremendous and as yet unforeseen negative effects on the environment. A need for a treatment is therefore long felt and unsolved. The present invention is directed to a method and system that achieves this objective.
The annual migration of North America's monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus Kluk (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) is a unique and amazing phenomenon. The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration as birds do. Unlike other butterflies that can overwinter as larvae, pupae, or even as adults in some species, monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates. Using environmental cues, the monarchs know when it is time to travel south for the winter. Monarchs use a combination of air currents and thermals to travel long distances. Some fly as far as 3,000 miles to reach their winter home. The multigenerational migration of North American monarch butterflies between breeding grounds in the northern U.S. and southern Canada and wintering grounds in central Mexico and coastal California is one of the world's most spectacular natural events. The interest in monarchs and their fascinating, visible biology is demonstrated by monarch butterflies being the official insect or butterfly of seven U.S. states; celebrated via festivals in Mexico, the United States, and Canada; the focus of science curricula; and the subject of multiple citizen-science projects.
Monarch butterfly populations have declined precipitously in North America in the last twenty years. This decline has commonly been linked to loss of milkweeds (Asclepias species) from farmer's fields. Monarch caterpillars are dependent on milkweeds. The ability of farmers to kill them with the Monsanto herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) has therefore led to this herbicide being considered as a major contributor to the decline of the monarch butterfly. Adult monarch butterflies feed on nectar that provides sugars and other nutrients. Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexican forests for overwintering. Overwintering monarchs reduce their metabolism and limit their feeding.
The introduction of neonicotinoids into the agricultural marketplace occurred around the same time as the introduction of GMO crops in the mid-to-late 1990s. Monsanto and Syngenta, the undisputed leaders in patented genetically engineered seeds, also have close relationships with the leading global neonic producer, Bayer. Most new commodity crops are increasingly coming to farmers with stacked traits, which means more than one transgenic alteration. These genetically engineered and transplanted traits are marketed to farmers as providing benefits such as resistance to multiple herbicides, pests, funguses, heat and drought.
Seed treatment applications are prophylactic, meaning they are used whether or not there is any evidence of pest pressures. At least 30 percent of soybean seeds planted annually (approximately 22.5 million out of 75 million acres) are pretreated with neonic insecticides (two of the primary four being imidacloprid and thiamethoxam). But corn has the highest use and acreage with around 94 percent of U.S. corn treated with a neonicotinoid. That widespread use has quickly elevated the Midwest to the highest levels of neonicotinoid use in the country. These neonicotinoids don't stay in the plants and soil however, but find their ways into the water as well. A recent U.S. Geological Survey report confirmed that neonicotinoids were common in streams throughout the Midwest.
In 1999, common milkweed, the monarch's food plant, was found in half of corn and soybean fields, but in only 8% of them a decade later. Glyphosatetolerant GM crops are grown in the same fields each year. Once absorbed, glyphosate is translocated to the roots and therefore the milkweed does not regenerate. It has been shown that clothianidin, a very long-acting systemic neonicotinoid insecticide, has contributed to the decline of monarch butterflies. USDA researchers have identified the neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin as a likely contributor to monarch butterfly declines in North America. Neonicotinoids have been strongly implicated in pollinator declines worldwide. As shown by a report from a task force of the International Union of Nature Conservation based in Switzerland, neonicotinoids, such as clothianidin (Bayer), are a particular hazard because, unlike most pesticides, they are soluble molecules. From soil or seed treatments they can reach nectar and are found in pollen.
USDA researchers have shown that clothianidin can have effects on monarch caterpillars at doses as low as 1 part per billion. The effects seen in experiments were on caterpillar size, caterpillar weight, and caterpillar survival. The lethal dose (LC50) they found to be 15 parts per billion. The caterpillars in their experiments were exposed to clothianidin-treated food for only 36 hrs, however. The researchers therefore noted that in agricultural environments caterpillar exposure would likely be greater than in their experiments. Furthermore, that butterfly caterpillars would be exposed in nature to other pesticides, including other neonicotinoids. In sampling experiments from agricultural areas in South Dakota the researchers found that milkweeds had on average over 1 ppb clothianidin. On this basis the USDA researchers concluded that “neonicotinoids could negatively affect larval monarch populations.”
Neonicotinoids are now the most widely used pesticides in the world. Neonicotinoids are neurotoxins that are partially banned in the EU. There has been negligible research on the effects of neonicotinoids on butterflies. There is a desperate need for an effective treatment to advert the destruction of monarch butterflies that has been observed over the last decade. The ramifications of the elimination of the monarch butterfly will have tremendous and as yet unforeseen negative effects on the environment. A need for a treatment is therefore long felt and unsolved. The present invention is directed to a method and system that achieves this objective.